In the field of wireless communications, high frequency operation allows for very high throughput in short-range wireless data transmissions over wireless data networks. However, as operating frequencies and data transfer rates increase, power consumption in wireless devices may become prohibitively high. To offset such increasing power consumption, the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WGA) defines a power save (PS) mode by which a wireless device may “go to sleep” for one or more “doze” beacon intervals. In this mode a wireless device is not able to transmit or receive data and consumes very lower power.
Since power management is a critical factor in wireless devices, each wireless device in a wireless data network may choose an independent “sleep interval” for such a PS mode according to its own power consumption and traffic delivery requirements. The “sleep interval” of the PS mode is measured in the number of beacon intervals (BIs) between successive awake BIs. The longer the sleep interval, the lower the average power consumption of the wireless device. A sleep interval includes one or more “doze” BIs. However, it is difficult to enter a sleep interval without inadvertently losing data if data transfers are scheduled while the wireless device is dozing. The WGA specification does not propose a guideline for power savings in a wireless device that is busy transmitting and/or receiving data.